A Russian woman whose elderly parents disappeared after Kyiv launched an offensive into the Kursk region pleaded this week for an evacuation “corridor” via Ukraine, saying thousands were still trapped by the fighting.
Kyiv launched the surprise cross-border assault on the Russian region almost six months ago, capturing dozens of villages and the regional hub of Sudzha.
Many civilians were caught on the opposite side of the front line and cut off from their relatives, with discontent growing at the lack of information from regional officials.
“I want my parents back. We are Russian citizens. And we demand a corridor for our relatives,” resident Lyubov Prilutskaya said on the VKontakte social media platform late Tuesday.
Prilutskaya confirmed she had made the post in an interview with AFP on Wednesday.
The 37-year-old has for months been trying to locate her mother and father in the occupied zone, and has repeatedly criticised authorities for not doing more to release those trapped behind the front line.
Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged the situation in the Kursk region was “very difficult” in a televised meeting with local governor Alexander Khinshtein on Wednesday, but did not explicitly broach the issue of missing residents.
“The people, of course, are enduring all these trials and tribulations courageously,” Putin said.
The Russian leader also suggested increasing the financial benefits to those who had lost property in the region, saying the current 150,000 ruble ($1,500) payout was “insufficient”.
Ukraine says thousands of its civilians are held in areas seized and occupied by Moscow since its assault began in February 2022, and that it is providing safe passage to Russians in the Kursk region.
Its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has repeatedly defended the Kursk offensive, calling it on Wednesday a “very important operation” that had boosted Kyiv’s negotiating position.
– ‘Don’t you dare’ –
Prilutskaya said that if Moscow was not prepared to allow Kyiv to return Russian citizens via its own territory, then there should be a “corridor through Ukraine and Belarus”.
She also criticised some Russian media outlets for suggesting only a few hundred residents remained in Sudzha.
“Don’t you dare lie to people that there are not thousands of peaceful Russians in Sudzha,” she said.
An official missing persons list compiled by Russian authorities initially recorded only around 500 people unaccounted for in the Ukrainian-occupied zone, but locals say the number is close to 3,000.
Her comments came days after Moscow and Kyiv traded blame for a deadly strike on a boarding school sheltering dozens of civilians in Sudzha.
“The loved-ones of the Russian citizens who are left there do not care who struck,” Prilutskaya told AFP of Saturday’s strike.
“The strike on the boarding school is another good reason to get the people who are left out of the occupation as soon as possible.”